


What was lost in the fire

by acertaindefenseattorney



Series: Prompt responses [1]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5264594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertaindefenseattorney/pseuds/acertaindefenseattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "a letter from the duke to thomas in the style of real 1920s love letters"</p><p>Writing in the style of 1920s love letters is both fun, and incredibly embarrassing. Everything was so sappy back then! But at least the sap level here is helped by the knowledge that he turned out to be kind of a prick. Is he being sincere? We just don’t know.</p><p>For the real letters I drew from go here: http://rictornorton.co.uk/dearboy.htm</p>
            </blockquote>





	What was lost in the fire

> _Darling T,_
> 
> _I’m afraid your last letter has undone me, and all the past week it has gone like this; I return from this and that social function to find that I have been strapped into my dinner clothes and my manners like a cage all night, quite unable to breathe. Only when the supper is served, the sheets turned back and the valet dismissed — that is, when I am alone at last — does the noose around my chest loosen, for only alone I am allowed to be with you, even in thought!_
> 
> _So it is that each night I go to my dresser and take out your letters — though I needn’t, having committed the most of them to memory, so that I often find myself, unbidden, in the finest company, recalling some particular phrase of yours and damning you quietly to distraction — and thumb through every one._
> 
> _Only at the end of each week, when I have exhausted the endless re-reading, do I write back to you. With you I am greedy and selfish, I take more than I give; but this you must love, for you claimed in your last note to love all of me._
> 
> _Do I remember the ball at Lady C.’s? You needn’t ask: I remember everything when it comes to our summer. You must have guessed that I’ve never had another like it? Or perhaps you imagine that ours was only one in a line of summers spent with the footmen of family friends… No, that it was not, you must believe me._
> 
> _You ask if I might find you a role close to me one day and the answer is yes, yes, yes. Only send me a word and I will install you, T, at the heart of my house._
> 
> _For now, allow me to be as greedy, selfish, demanding as ever... and write to me again, soon._
> 
> _Ever your P._
> 
> _\- P.S. Of course when it’s not your words that plague my mind it is other, tenderer parts, that I daren’t commit to writing._
> 
> _– P.P.S. Ventured to the Cave past weekend. All and sundry asking “Where on earth is that beautiful footman?”, so it seems your impression has yet to fade, even now._

Bonus content: Thomas writes back immediately —

> _P,_
> 
> _Soppy stuff._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Really,_
> 
> _T_


End file.
